The weather is finally warming, which means plenty of hot weather foods. I’ve begun a pretty obsessive smoothie kick–but these smoothies are super light and vegan friendly (despite the fact I’m not a vegan!).

This particular one is composed of frozen blueberries, a handful of ice (the frozen berries reduce the amount of actual ice you need, since I’m still rocking those pesky trays), one banana, and a splash of pomegranate juice.

A rainy stop in Brookline Booksmith “just to browse” always ends with me purchasing a handful of new tomes. I can’t help it; it’s a sick addiction–one I never want to be cured of, so don’t even try.

There’s nothing better than BB because every single time I’m in there, some patron inevitably asks a very random, vague question about some “book they heard was good about a guy, who wore a blazer…” or something equally cryptic, and without fail, whoever is asked says, “ah yes. I know what you’re talking about, follow me this way.”

I want to be that person. It’s incredible. And it’s why this is the greatest bookshop around.

More progress on that incredible turtle shell one of my student’s is working on; she has spent the entire year on the “Sheldon” project and learned tons of skills from it. This particular student loves to try to understand the pattern herself and asks questions after experimentation–the best kind of knitter, in my humble opinion.

Finished on the train in five short rides, Howard Zinn’s The Bomb is a stunning exploration–both personal and historical–of the atomic bomb. Fascinating, chock full of facts without feeling overwrought, at times heartbreaking.

If you were a fan of John Hersey’s Hiroshima (which everyone, and I mean everyone, should read), this is a perfect companion for it.

And it’s amazing how we can so easily blindly follow into the darkness. Stark, indeed.

Purchased this gorgeous hardwood needle hole, as I like to call it, at Purl Soho last weekend in NYC. It’s basically a little wooden holder for all my knitting darning needles. Gorgeous, no?

Also snatched? Some beautiful cross stitch swatches a bit stiffer than the normal Aida and in gorgeous colorways like mustard and spring green. I also got two cross stitch pattern books, including the amazing Cross Stitch One Point Pattern.

I picked up a pile of delicious reads at the famed Strand in NYC last weekend. I could have spent, literally, the entire two days there. Alas, I had but an hour or so to peruse the stacks before my train—and maybe a few bespectacled male book slut counterparts?

One of my students has been diligently working on this pattern all year. She hasn’t wavered; she hasn’t swayed. She has learned some serious skills from this particular pattern…and it’s all coming to fruition.

With just a month left, there’s just the shell to be worked–and I swell with pride because this shell requires a lot of new skills, like working with more than one color at a time, carrying the yarn up the side of the work, and slipping stitches in the front and back to create those shell “window panes”.

The students at my school are folding paper cranes en masse; it’s all you see in the halls these days and is part of an effort to ship 1,000 of them to an organization that donates a whole bunch of relief money (in exchange for the cranes) to Japan in the wake of the tsunami.